Many offices, stores, factories and homes are equipped with drinking water dispensers for their members. While some dispensers are plumbed permanently to a tap water supply, other employ a user replaceable supply, such as an inverted water bottle removably mounted on top of the dispenser. Examples of the design of such dispensers are U.S. Pat. No. 3,698,603 issued Oct. 1972 to Radcliffe and U.S. Pat. No. 4,664,349 issued May 1987 to Johansen.
One of the primary difficulties with such prior art dispenser systems employing an inverted bottle lies in the procedure of user replacement of a used bottle. At this time, a nearby full bottle has to be substituted in its place. Typically the bottles are of 5 gallon capacity and therefore very heavy. This means that, after the user removes the used bottle and opens the cap of the full bottle, the user would have to lift the full bottle and, in one very quick movement, invert it and insert its neck accurately into the intake opening on top of the dispenser and maneuver the body of the bottle into vertical position for normal operation. Any less than good execution of this exceptionally demanding procedure will result in excessive water spillage plus possible personal injury. In any case, the current procedure always wastes some water through unavoidable spillage, in addition to being dangerous to the user.
Two prior patents taught the idea of, upon loading of the full container, piercing an otherwise sealing member of the container thus establishing either the flow of one single fluid or the simultaneous flow of two different fluids from the supply bottle. The piercing element being a permanent part of the dispenser. These are U.S. Pat. No. 1,248,704 issued Oct. 1916 to Pogue and U.S. Pat. No. 4,676,775 issued June 1987 to Zolnierczyk, et al. But the implementation of these methods would require the modification of the existing dispensers and bottles which is undesirable. One earlier patent application (Emily M. Tsao, filed February 1992, patent pending) taught the idea of, upon loading of the full container, opening up a ball valve under the weight of the full container through a linear to rotational movement conversion mechanism. Although this invention does achieve the objective of nonspill loading without any modification of the existing dispensers and bottles, a different, simpler design concept was conceived later to achieve the same functionality.